Traveling with 3 children in late 20s and my husband. Like being active, don't need a lot of big cities, enjoy off beaten path. Beginning from St. Louis. Where to fly into? Must sees? Routes?
Posted by
Danville, VT
12040 posts
Why fly into Munich and Salzburg just to immediately travel several more hours to Switzerland? You have so many other world-class ski destinations much closer and for much less cost. From Munich, Garmisch-Partenkirchen and Oberstdorf are only about an hour or so away, and there's several more major ski resorts just over the border in Austria. If you flew into Salzburg, Obertauern and Kitzbühel are both less than an hour to the south.
Posted by
OP
6 posts
Thanks Tom. We are wide open with ideas. Never been to Europe at all. Skiing in the alps is just a bucket list item. Trying to figure out a great trip with the 10 days that we have. Appreciate any other suggestions.
Posted by
Greeley, co, usa
2589 posts
One of my friends went for a week skiing near Bad Ischl, a short distance from Salzburg
Posted by
New York, NY, USA
11294 posts
First of all, you have to figure out where you want to be in Europe. Second, you have to figure out the best way to get there, or near to there.
For instance, there are no nonstop flights to Europe from St. Louis, so you'll have to change somewhere. You can go to all kinds of places with one change - except Salzburg isn't one of them. Salzburg has no nonstop flights to North America, so going there from St. Louis would require two changes. Therefore, if you do want to go to Bavaria and Salzburg, you'd do better to fly into Munich (lots of nonstop service from JFK, Newark, Toronto, Chicago O'Hare, Atlanta, etc.). Depending on what else you want to see in the region, it may be more efficient to fly back from Vienna instead of Munich.
If, instead of Bavaria, you do want to see Switzerland (and Tom is right, there is Alpine skiing in other countries besides Switzerland), you'd fly into Zurich (again, changing somewhere in North America). Depending on what you want to do in Switzerland, you may do better flying into Zurich and out of Geneva.
To find flight options, play around on Kayak: http://www.kayak.com/flights. When looking for "open jaw" options (such as St. Louis to Munich and Vienna to St. Louis), use the "multi city" option. Don't look for two one-way flights, as that's usually much more expensive,, unless you're looking at a budget carrier like Norwegian or Icelandic.
Note that on Kayak (at least on the desktop version), on the left you can select connection airports, minimum and maximum layover times, etc - very handy.